


and as the world comes to an end (i'll be here to hold your hand)

by chemicalpixie



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, I Mixed Book and Movie Canons I Play Fast and Loose Like That, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Like Nobody Does It Clove's Just Vulgar, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalpixie/pseuds/chemicalpixie
Summary: “clove hates this. she has a knife in her sleeve. she could kill him before anyone knows what happened. she restrains herself. if she kills caeser they will not let her into the arena. and if she is not in the arena, she cannot show them what she can do. she cannot show them how dangerous she truly is.”or; clove is deadly before she is anything else.





	and as the world comes to an end (i'll be here to hold your hand)

**Author's Note:**

> guess whose back with another hunger games fic? it's me. also, i'm in the process of heavily editing the hayffie fic from way-back-when so it's “canon-compliant” with my own hunger games fics (AKA the details match up with my ot3 fic. and they technically match up with this fic and my glimmer fic but lmao haymitch and effie don't give a fuck about two dead career girls so there's nothing to match up there) and adding some other fun details like haymitch and effie's backstories. and also making the writing better, bc that's like almost two years old, y'all. i took a break from that to finish this, because who doesn't love clove? also in my own personal headcanons marvel is gay and glimmers a lesbian and they're bffs. just thought i'd throw that out there. maybe one of these days i'll get my shit together and write the things i said i would, like the finnick/annie fic or the foxface fic or the cashmere and gloss fic. we'll find out. anyways, enjoy, and if you liked it, please kudos and comment i would die for validation lmao
> 
> the title comes from “king and lionheart” by monsters and men.

clove hates the interview portion of the games. it has always been her least favorite part, and that has not changed since she volunteered. she hates this. it is not that she minds the dress, or the makeup, or the waxing, because she can put up with all of that. it is the pretending she abhors, it is glimmer and marina and herself all dressed up as they act like they couldn't kill caeser in fifteen seconds if she had her knives and glimmer had her mace and marina had her trident. she hates that they have to pretend like this. she is deadly, this she knows more than anything, and clove hates having to pretend otherwise. cato obviously notices her glaring at the television broadcasting the interviews to the other tributes, and he nudges her, grinning a little. “can't be subtle, can you clover?” he whispers, and his breath tickles on her ear a little.

“never,” she murmurs back, a grin on her face now because she may hate this, but she doesn't hate cato. (the two of them grew up together. he is sixteen, she is fifteen. they have always had each other's backs. she is as deadly with her knives as he is his sword. their weapons go together nicely — her projectile with his close-range. they will rule the arena with blood on their weapons). marvel stands beside her, and he is watching glimmer's interview intently. clove pokes at him. she's only known him and glimmer for a few days, but she already knows that he and glimmer would die for each other, in the way that she would kill for cato and cato would kill for her.

“you wanna fuck her?” clove asks. she delights in the vulgarity of it all. she likes dirty things. she is a girl with grime under her nails and sweat on the back of her neck and knives in her hand. she feels too clean right then, too exposed, and she can't change that, so this will have to do.

marvel turns an interesting shade of red. cato chuckles from behind her. “be nice to the boy, clover. he's going onstage soon.” clove just grins, razor-sharp, at marvel, who is slightly less red now. but only slightly.

“i don't want to fuck her, clove,” he hisses in a low voice.

clove's grin doesn't shrink. “do you want to fuck me, then?” she asks, still grinning. marvel begins to resemble an over-ripe apple.

“clove, _please_ ,” he begs, and clove backs off. this is not the time to be making any enemies. not that she and marvel will be enemies, at first. the five of them, the five careers will kill, they will bludgeon and beat and maim and forge their titles as victors out of blood. it is only when the other blood in the arena has run dry that they will turn on each other. there are only five of them. the boy from four is young and weak. he is one of those who is trying to become finnick. from what marina has told her, finnick hates the young ones more than anything else. he knows they are trying to become him. marina is not trying to become finnick. marina is something else entirely.

“heads up,” cato says, and clove is out of her thoughts and grounded again, and they are cheering for marvel and now she is on. she holds up her pink skirts and walks onstage.

“welcome, clove,” caeser says, and clove smiles. it is a fake smile. she hates it.

“thank you, caeser,” she says, all the while with this glistening fake smile across her face. “it's oh-so-very good to be here.” she sounds like glimmer. she hates it. she is not glimmer. the glimmer she sounds like is not glimmer. she is the glimmer that glimmer puts on for the camera. the glimmer that glimmer is is bloody, a mace in her hand and the scent of another girl on her breath as she crushes someone's skull. clove knows who glimmer truly is. she just hopes glimmer knows, too.

“i'm sure it is,” caeser says. he is talking down to her. clove hates this. she has a knife in her sleeve. she could kill him before anyone knows what happened. she restrains herself. if she kills caeser they will not let her into the arena. and if she is not in the arena, she cannot show them what she can do. she cannot show them how dangerous she truly is. caeser continues. “so, clove, you're one of the younger tributes this year, besides rue and lucan — ” so that's the name of the district four boy. huh. she didn't even know his name. she and cato had looked at him and decided _no_ without even exchanging a glance. “so what makes you think you're qualified?”

 _i have never missed a shot_ , clove thinks. _i could kill you here and now_. she says, “i always was the best at the academy. and what's the point of waiting another few years?” she does not say that her older sister fennel broke an ankle in training at sixteen and could never go into the games. she does not say that fennel walked with a limp until the day she took her sword to her own ankle and bled out on their bathroom floor. she does not say that her family has never known if it was madness or suicide. instead, she smiles, and caeser smiles back.

“give it up for clove, everyone,” he says, and they cheer for her, but clove knows — it is nothing like the way they will scream her name after she wins the games.

//

there is one more day of training before they go into the arena. clove does not need the practice. and so instead, the five of them sit on the sides, watching the other tributes. there is no one as good as they are. no one else even comes close. clove sits on glimmer's lap, and marvel leans on cato's shoulder and marina's arm is wrapped around glimmer's shoulder and clove holds marina's hand loosely in her own, fingers tangled together, and they laugh hyena cackling laughs at the other tributes. and they watch marina throw her trident into the targets and as cato decapitates the mannequins and as marvel throws spears into the hearts of the targets and they are deadly, they are young and they are deadly and they are _alive_. glimmer toys with clove's hair, and clove's hand is dangerously low on her waist. clove wants to know exactly how much she can get away with. glimmer says nothing, just smiles, and eventually clove gets up to show off. there's really no harm in the intimidation, is there? she throws three knives into the hearts of three targets, and when she looks back at them, cato is grinning at her.

“that's my clover,” he says, and he looks at her with something that clove thinks is almost pride. they have never been proud of each other. it is hard to be proud, clove thinks, when you always fight side-by-side. they have always been there for each other. they will always be there for each other. even when marvel and glimmer and marina have gone, have died bloody in the arena, it will always be the two of them. it always has been. and if there is anything clove knows, it is that the arena cannot change this.

//

and then, they go into the arena. and glimmer chooses the bow and arrow, like her mentor wanted, and clove can't help but feel disappointment. the two of them will not fight side-by-side with blood on their weapons. clove has always seen it as the five of them, hand in bloody hand, and now glimmer has fallen. she has not died but she has fallen. she does not stand with the others, even with the bloody knife she wields. she is not _glimmerwhoisdangerous_ , she is _glimmerwhocannotwieldabow_ , ditzy and dumb and sexy just like her mentor wanted. after the bloodbath, they count their spoils from the cornucopia and then they _hunt_. they take down the girl from eight quickly, and then send peeta back to finish her. clove thinks this was a good choice. make the lover boy prove his worth. while he is gone, cato discusses how they will kill him.

glimmer wants to carve him open, cut him open and let his stomach spill onto the dirt and let the creatures come for his guts. marina wants to drown him, and cato wants to snap his neck and marvel wants to spear him and let him bleed out. clove thinks that it doesn't matter how he dies, as long as the girl on fire gets to watch. she thinks that toying with the girl on fire will be _fun_.

they find her that night, up in a tree, and glimmer is desperately trying to kill the girl on fire, to prove she is more than her mentor wanted her to be, to prove she is a girl with blood on her hands, and clove wants to tell her that she already is everything she needs to be, and the girl on fire ends up with one of glimmer's arrows, taunting her with it, and they decide to stop for the night, and the next morning, clove will climb up that tree and cut her guts out herself (she knows she can do it. she has never doubted herself). she stays by the fire that night, watching as cato and glimmer laugh playfully with each other (in another world, she would be jealous, but in this one, she knows cato doesn't mean anything more than friendship by it — she has seen his face when he wants someone. it is that of a hunter, of a lion stalking his prey, and this is the face of a kitten, playfighting for the thrill of it — and that glimmer is hers. she is not jealous. she has no need to be, because glimmer is hers and cato is hers, and she knows this with a certainty deep in her soul). she throws knives into lizards and pretends they're the girl on fire. once the girl on fire is dead, the capital has no underdog to root for, and the career pack will rule the arena, just like they were meant to. she falls asleep that night and dreams of the girl on fire _burning_.

//

clove wakes up to screaming. someone is screaming and she can feel cato's hand in her own but his grasp slips from hers as she runs and runs and runs and it's only once she's made it to the lake that she understands what she was running from. she left her sleeping bag there, but has her pack (and it's not like there aren't more sleeping bags in the cornucopia). there were tracker-jackers, and she only has one sting, but it hurts like hell, and she looks up, to see how badly the others are hurt, to judge whether they will allot funds for sponsors to buy a cure for the hallucinations or if it's not bad enough for that, and it hits her like a punch in the gut that glimmer isn't here. marina is gone. marvel has stumbled out of the lake and is vomiting up lake water from his dive in, and cato is climbing out, shaking himself off like a dog, and there are two cannon shots in the distance, boom-boom, and clove knows in her bones that glimmer and marina are dead. she thinks to herself then, _i will kill the girl on fire_ , and before her death was just fun, was a game to try and torture lover boy, and now it is more than that. it is _revenge_. she can see lover boy waist-deep in the lake, stumbling around like a buffoon, and she rips the knife out of her boot and swims over to him, then stands up and holds the knife at his throat.

“your girl,” she says, slow and cold in her anger. “she killed glimmer. she killed marina. how well do you think she'd take your death?” the knife digs deeper into his skin. she can see blood.

“clove, don't,” cato says tiredly.

clove whips around to look at him. “and why not?” she asks, and there is something in cato's eyes that makes her pause.

“he'll lead us back to her. we'll kill him in front of her. imagine how much it will hurt.”

clove steps back, thinks. “okay.” marvel is on the ground where he was throwing up. clove moves closer, and she can see tears streak down his dirt-stained cheeks.

she doesn't ask him if he is okay. he stands, shaking a little. cato loops one of his arms around marvel's waist and one of marvel's arms around his own shoulders.

“she was like my sister,” he says, quietly. “i loved her more than anything in this life.”

“we'll make her bleed,” clove says, and means it. marina deserved more than this, glimmer deserved more than this.

“are you sure that's what you want?” someone asks, and the voice is familiar, but impossible, because it's glimmer. clove realizes, then — she's hallucinating. the tracker jackers.

cato is ordering them around, and clove follows wordlessly. lover boy is leading them to the girl on fire, where they will kill them both, flay them alive for what they did. _glimmerthatisnotglimmer_ is skipping in front of her, blood and pus in an ugly green mix ooze from her eyes and her nose and her mouth and her ears.

“you don't get revenge,” _glimmerthatisnotglimmer_ says. “you don't deserve it. you didn't save me. look at you, — ” she scoffs, disgusted, “ — so alive. and look at me, clover, look at me. aren't i _pretty_?” meanwhile, behind _glimmerthatisnotglimmer_ , there is a _marinathatisnotmarina_ , with a blue-black face and bleeding feet and pus oozing from her eyes and mouth, who sing-songs clove's name until she's sick of hearing it. they near the clearing and lover boy bolts, runs ahead and they can hear him yelling for katniss, yelling at her to run, and cato, after making sure marvel can stand on his own, runs after him, and clove hears flesh strike bone, and _glimmerthatisnotglimmer_ purses her lips.

“hmm,” she says. “cato never was one for subtlety. do you think he'll finish the job, or he'll leave some for you?”

 _marinathatisnotmarina_ cackles, and holds out her hand. “well, i sure hope he won't,” she giggles, in a way marina would never have, like a besotted school girl, like someone who was weak and if clove knows anything it's that marina was not weak and she cannot take it anymore and she shoves her hands over her ears and yells “shut up shut up shut up — ” and marvel looks up in concern and clove glares at him, because she cannot explain to him what it is like, not here, not now, not with the literal ghosts of their dead teammates ( _glimmerthatisnotglimmer_ whispers, “we were more than that and you know it, clove” while _marinathatisnotmarina_ murmurs “don't lie to yourself.”) haunting her. the cream that cures tracker-jacker stings arrives minutes later, and clove has never been more grateful for a sponsor gift.

//

they do not see any other tributes, and in the meantime, they hunt in shifts, two-by-two, and they mourn. marvel hunts as much as he can. cato and clove do not say it, but they know. they know he wants to kill her, want the girl on fire dead for what he did to glimmer. he does not sleep as well now, is restless beside cato and clove hears cato whisper to him in their tent at night, telling him to shh, everything is okay, and that they will kill the girl on fire. none of them think about what will happen when it is only the three of them left. of what will happen when two of them have to die. clove thinks she knows that marvel would never go home without glimmer, and that cato wouldn't go home without her, and that she will remember their names in blood in her home in the victor's village. she has nightmares about it, has nightmares about being all alone in an empty home because her sister is dead and her mother might as well be a ghost and her father works still even though clove is a victor and he doesn't have to, and clove's talent is piano because they had to give her something other than throwing knives to do with those nimble fingers and she thinks piano isn't the worst thing in the world until she turns around and does not see glimmer or cato or marvel or marina behind her. she turns back and imagines them there, cato waltzing with marina and marvel with glimmer and there is a room full of love until she turns around to see them and it is empty again and she bolts upright, breathing hard.

it is on the third day that she sees smoke rising in the distance and laughs because someone has been stupid enough to make a fire, and then she sees another, and another, and they agree to split up, to find who is trying to trap them and kill them. clove does not say good-bye. there is something still too fragile in her to say good-bye again.

and there is an explosion, like the cannons but louder, and clove knows instantly. someone has destroyed the cornucopia. she runs back and finds cato and marvel and the district three boy begging for his life. cato snaps his neck. clove smiles. cato is convinced that the person is still out there, but marvel and clove talk him down. and then that night there is no one in the sky besides the district three boy, and then they know. they hunt the next morning, and before they set off, cato squeezes her hand for a brief moment and clove presses a gentle kiss to marvel's forehead. “for luck,” she whispers, and off they go.

there are two cannons, boom-boom, in quick succession like glimmer and marina's cannons and clove is running through the forest in a panic because they found them they killed marvel and they killed cato and she is alone she will never make it this way she will never make it without them she is strong but not that strong and then she runs, face-first, into cato's chest. they only need to glance at each other to know that neither of them knows where marvel is, and they run and they run and they run and in the end all they can see is the hovercraft taking him away and all clove can think is how she wanted to tell him good-bye. 

//

and then the rules are changed, two of them can go home if they're from the same district and a weight is taken off of clove's heart and she and cato can go home and there is something about a home with him in it that makes her future not feel so alone. there is someone to mourn with her. she will never be alone again. and they announce the feast, something you all desperately need, and clove puzzles over what that might be, late into the night and when they are alone in their tent cato presses kisses to her jawbone and neck and says, in between “what we desperately need, clover, is to kill the other tributes, and this — ” he pauses here, pressing a quick kiss to her nose. “is our chance.”

she trusts him. more than life, more than herself, more than anything, and so she whispers, “okay,” and snuggles closer to him, and drifts into a deep, dreamless sleep.

//

and at the feast, clove sees the girl on fire, and she knows she has the bags and she should get them out of there, she should not stay here and fight her in the open but she remembers marvel's death and she remember's glimmer's screams and then finds herself throwing a knife at her but she isn't close enough and only hits her over the eyebrow and there's blood dripping down into her eyes but it wasn't enough and she leaps on her and she's holding her down and traces her cheek with a knife and she says, “i'm going to kill you, just like i killed your little ally. what was her name? so unimportant, i don't even remember,” and she can see the girl on fire's face fill with rage but she just can't stop, doesn't want to stop when she remembers what this girl has done to her. what she has taken away from her. “i promised cato if he let me have you, i'd give the audience a good show. so let's start with this,” clove whispers, stroking her knife across the girl on fire's cheek. “i'll cut your lips off. you don't need to kiss lover boy anymore.” and she pulls her knife down to her lips and then there's a sickening feeling of losing her balance and then she's being held against the cornucopia by the district eleven male, the only one who held a candle to cato in terms of size, and he's holding a rock and she's screaming for cato she's screaming his name he said he would keep her safe if it came down to it and there's a sickening crunch and she can feel something sticky trickle down the back of her neck, and all she can think about is cato cato cato —

— and then he's here. he's here and he's holding her and whispering, “it's okay clover, it's okay, it's going to be okay,” but she knows it isn't and he's going home without her and the rule doesn't even matter and cato is crying, just like district twos are told not to, but tears drip down his cheeks, and clove is just glad that he's here she cannot imagine dying without him and she wants to tell him she loves him it wasn't his fault but words are too much for her and she thinks about her sister she hopes that wherever fennel is she will go she can see her sister again and cato is still crying and she can hear him whispering about how it isn't fair and she can't comfort him and he can't save her and so instead she just squeezes his hand and thinks i'm glad it was you it has always been you i love you cato cato cato cato cato —


End file.
